Nhl

NHL fans get message as blame games begin By Tom GulittiMcClatchy Newspapers

Commissioner Gary Bettman speaks to reporters after meeting with NHL hockey team owners, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012, in New York. The current collective bargaining agreement between the league and the players expires Saturday at midnight. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Instead of getting together at the bargaining table on Day 1 of NHL Lockout III, the league and the players used the day to take their cases to the fans.

After the old collective bargaining agreement expired and the lockout officially began at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, the NHL posted “A message to our fans” on its website.

Although the league again said in its message that it is, “committed to negotiating around the clock to reach a new CBA that is fair to the players and to the 30 NHL teams,” there was only informal communication over the telephone Sunday between NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly and NHL Players’ Association special counsel Steve Fehr.

No future negotiations are scheduled at this time.

“This is a time of year for all attention to be focused on the ice, not on a meeting room,” part of the NHL’s message said. “The league, the clubs and the players all have a stake in resolving our bargaining issues appropriately and getting the puck dropped as soon as possible. We owe it to each other, to the game and, most of all, to the fans.”

The NHLPA responded later in the day by posting a video on its website entitled, “A Players’ Message to Fans about the NHL Owners Lockout.” The video feature pleas from five star players: Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby, St. Louis’ David Backes, Colorado’s Gabriel Landeskog, Toronto’s James Reimer and Chicago’s Jonathan Toews.

“I think as players we understand that the people that suffer the most are the fans,” Crosby said in the video.

The main message was the same the players have been preaching throughout negotiations.

“You don’t need to have a lockout,” Reimer said. “We could keep playing and bargain at the same time, but that’s not what the owners want to do. They want to lock out and use it as a tactic. So, the fans lose the game they love and we don’t get to perform in front of the fans.”

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said he has told the NHLPA since last November that the owners would not play another season under the guidelines of the expiring CBA. The owners are looking to cut the players’ share of hockey-related revenue from 57 percent in 2011-12 to around 50 percent. The owners’ most recent proposal started out with the players receiving 49 percent of HRR and ended in Year 6 with them getting 47 percent.

The players refuse to accept an immediate cut to their salaries and believe the owners’ financial troubles can be solved by the largermarket teams helping the struggling teams through increased revenue sharing.

“Like any partnership, you want both sides to benefit and I think that’s the case here,” Crosby says in the video. “As players we want to play, but we also know what’s right and what’s fair.”

With it appearing highly unlikely that training camps will open Friday as scheduled and the expectation that the league will begin cancelling preseason games in the next few days, the expected exodus of some players to Europe began.

Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin and Ottawa’s Sergei Gonchar signed with Metallurg Magnitogorsk and former Ranger Ruslan Fedotenko signed with HC Donbass of Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League. There were also reports out of Russia that the Devils’ Ilya Kovalchuk will sign with the SKA St. Petersburg of the KHL later this week.

In addition, Winnipeg’s Ondrek Pavelec (HC Trinec) and Dallas’ Jaromir Jagr (Kladno) reached agreements to play in the Czech Republic.

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Bob wrote on Sep 17, 2012 7:10 PM:

" I think cable subscribers should lock out cable. When you realize they get billions mostly from cable companies charging us excessive bills for channels we do not want, it amazes me there are billions in a sport that a very small minority watches. "

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